Standing in momentary shock, all four of us stared with bafflement at the wake of Carl’s outside run.
“What….the….fuck.”
A sudden smack back into reality erupted as Stacey loudly pulled one shoulder free of its steel blade imprisonment, showering a thick stream of blood across her side of the room. Not only was her radius now wider, with plenty more room for swiping and clawing, she also now had a hand free to take out the other knife should she be smart enough to figure that out. The latter seemed pretty likely to come into effect.
“Right, shall we go then”
Politely suggested Phil, said as if he were proposing a move from afternoon Pimms to a game of croquet.
It wasn’t possible for us to vacate the property by leaving out the front door. Noise of Carl yelling obscenities whilst waving his chainsaw around were still pretty prominent out there, as was there a strong army of zombies angrily awaiting their next meal. It turns out Carl was bat shit crazy, but his antics seem to be keeping the zombies back for the short term at least.
The roof was futile, and staying in the living room would be like waiting in a coffin, so there was only one option; down. Not out by the carpark, which swarmed with intently hungry flesh-eaters, but down onto the high street through the window. The high street, having glanced out through the curtains, was actually now pretty clear from what we could see. Most of the zombies had assumedly made their way or were indeed making their way into the carpark, which wasn’t easy to get to from the rest of town and therefore an interchangeable complication. It was easy to spot a couple of our undead chums lurking by bus stops or in the shadows of the off-streets, but being able to count them on two hands gave an element of hope compared to the abacus load in the other direction. If any did spot us, they would be so far away that we felt confident an outrun was in the offing, permitting adequate time to peg it somewhere else before they had an opportunity to see where we were going.
The window to the concrete pavement below was much too high for us to jump and would have certainly caused injury, so an educated decision was made to scout for some rope. Unfortunately for us, none of the residents were budding rock climbers, so making a sensible assumption that gardening string probably wouldn’t hold, we opted to follow inspiration from watching many the prison movie and use bed sheets. Tying the sheets around the window frame and strips of clothes around our palms to avoid rope burn, Derek was the first to descend down to the hard surface of the street below. Under normal circumstances, I think all of us would have hesitated before the descent, perhaps allowing the dread of falling take over and act as a detriment. But when we had already seen Jon, the most apprehensive and cautious of all of us, try to cave a guy’s head in with a hammer, it didn’t look like any of us were going to let a bit of a drop get the better of us. However, not quite ascertaining an understanding of the physics behind the strength of both a window frame and a bed sheet when holding a climber, we thought it be better to permit each descendant a lone climb down before the next person took on the challenge.
Our climbing music was ecliptic and abstract, emitting a melody of a running chainsaw, anger fuelled shouting, zombie choir moans, and Stacey not shutting the fuck up. We were all music lovers, Derek himself actually writing scores for films, but this wasn’t a backing track that necessarily got our toes tapping, nor did it fill us with any level of confidence. But sure enough, after 60 odd seconds of graceful abseiling using floral patterned bedsheets, Derek got the soles of both feet firmly on the ground below with little fuss. A quick look around preceded a vertical thumbs to give the go ahead for climber number two. Phil and I encouraged Jon to be the next to take the plunge, and after hearing Carl’s outside screams hit an octave higher, he was only too happy to oblige. The same action followed, the three remaining helped as Jon edged over the window sill, back to the floor, and slowly moonwalked the bricks until he too was ‘safely’ on solid ground. Phil followed suit, and again signified another thumbs of for the fourth climber to ascend.
Stacey was noticeably moving more, meaning the remaining knife was on its last legs. At a guess, I would have said we had two minutes before she was free to roam, and I had a sneaky suspicion she was coming straight for us the moment she broke free. With a so far average time of about one minute to get down the sheet-rope to the high street, it was looking pretty tight to get us both down before Stacey came a-chomping. I signalled Lance to go next; there was no time for debate, so he too leant backwards out through the living room window. Lance hadn’t quite settled his legs for his first step yet when the chainsaw noise suddenly stopped. We had grown accustomed to the sound, amalgamated with that of Carl and the moaning of the zombies, so the sudden audio exclusion meant the silence was deafening. There was still a moan from the zombies, yet it seemed now to be one bass tone, humming on a constant note like a cello playing in a horror film to create suspense. Lance hadn’t started his descent yet, still high enough to see through the window back inside the suicide box from whence he came. I leant out the window, holding Lance’s arm whilst he set himself for the climb, but now was glancing back into the room over my right shoulder. The silence had stunned us; it had left us more apprehensive than the abundance of noise from only a few moments before. The sudden reduction had plummeted us down a log flume from a height of hope into the depths of anxiety.
I don’t know why we waited, why we had to pay such dedicative attention to what was happening, or indeed what was
about
to happen, but we did; we waited wide eyed with our hearts beating out of our chests, scanning the once secured fortress for a source of silence.
In an instant, the silence exploded to memories passed as Carl pelted back into the room holding a canister of petrol, slamming the living room door behind him and proceeding to move the sofas in front of it. He looked a state the last time we saw him, but an emotional state, not the state he was now. His once white shirt was no longer white, covered in dirt and blood and ripped beyond recognition. He wore bits of Zombies as jewellery, splattered all over his entire body. His jeans were ripped, and he had somehow lost a shoe to reveal a blackened, blistered foot, cut to shreds on the sole and smearing blood across the carpet with every step. Desperation commandeered his face, the fear now evidently taking prowess over the anger, torment and vengeance, with blood oozing from his hairline, across his face and down his neck. He looked utterly exhausted, and utterly beaten, but still had a distinct demeanour of determination; like even in his weakened, bloodied, beaten black and blue state he still wasn’t ready to give up the fight just yet. Before he could get the first sofa in place, the door began to rattle and push ajar as decayed arms wrapped around it, swiping with random aggression and hurtful intent. Slamming the door against the arms, Carl moved to lift the second sofa to put it on his new, less convincing barricade, to which I moved in order to aid his seemingly futile attempts at keeping the zombies out.
“GO!”
He screamed at me.
“Go now! Get the fuck out of here!”
Carl didn’t take time to stop in order to yell his instruction at me, busying himself persistently to chuck as much in the pile as he possibly could. I didn’t like leaving him alone, I knew he had done a lot for us outside with the chainsaw, keeping the intruders at bay for that little bit longer to enable us time to regroup and escape. Yet looking at him, covered in blood, limping, wincing in pain with every move, I also knew he was done for and trying to help him get out the window down to the others would be wasted energy which would inevitably end up in him turning too.
It was pointless to thank him; He wouldn’t have heard it, but I honestly don’t believe it was something he needed to hear. His actions may have been out of vengeance because of what happened to Stacey, but we will always think of him as the one that saved us, giving us the time we needed to get out of the flat, and for that we will all be eternally grateful. But for now, Lance and I needed to get the fuck out of here and down to the other guys so we can get running. With a heavy heart, I silently nodded Carl as he blocked the door with the last bit of furniture he could find, then turned to Lance and nodded for him to climb down. We were still looking OK for time, and again thanks to Carl distracting Stacey it would appear that we still had at least two minutes for my brother and I to get down to join our friends.
Lance got a couple of feet down as I scouted back in the room, but to my dismay, Carl had picked up the petrol canister, launching its contents all over the room, all over Stacey, and all over himself.
“Um, Carl, what are you doing?”
This was the first time I felt panic overcoming me. There was no way the bedsheet-rope we had concocted was anywhere near strong enough to hold two people, and the fall was way too high to chance jumping, so in that very instant I felt trapped, I was
imprisoned
.
“Carl! What the fuck are you doing?”
He didn’t answer.
Emptying the last of the canister all over himself and the monstrous form that used to embody his beloved girlfriend, Carl used his bruised, bloodied fingers to pull out a zippo lighter from his back pocket. Stacey continued trying to bite him, now being permitted to swipe and grab him drawing more blood and creating more wounds to which he seemed either numb or accustomed too. With one hand, Carl held her head, looking into her eyes in attempt to find the soul that once lived there. In the other hand, he raised the zippo.
Fuck.
His thumb pulled back the cog, releasing gas as he tried to create a spark.
Oh fuck.
Attempt two caused a huge flame souring high above its silver boxed creator.
Oh fucking fuck
.
“I love you Stacey”
His words cascaded with sincerity, clearly revisiting times of love and adoration they had spent together.
In that moment, the room slowed down, the noise stopped entirely, and all I could see was them. Stacey took back her original form as they stood hand in hand, dressed cleanly in all white with no sign of their wounds, pains or struggle. The room taking on the form of a framing vignette, he pulled her in and held her tightly to his body, unable to contain a smile of heartfelt contentment from beaming across his face. After holding her for a few seconds, he pulled her back, stroking her blonde hair behind her ear as he gazed into her bright blue glistening eyes. He saw memories of the good times they had shared, he saw a piece of his heart firmly affixed in the glint of her pupils, he saw his future; a family, a home, a wedding day, he saw everything they had ever wanted, all there, all in that moment. His eyes began overflowing with tears, not of sadness but of elated joy to be with her, to be standing there with her in his arms.
Carl ran his fingers through her long, shiny blond hair before pulling her in to match her lips with his. Physically engaged, he gently shut his mouth as the two became one, their souls forever intertwined.
I saw love when I stood there, nothing else. But then I saw a spark; it wasn’t a spark of adoration, but was the spark of his lighter held high above his gasoline soaked body. I saw the spark that immediately propelled me back into reality; the reality of which had Carl holding Stacey as she began biting him and ripping apart his skin.
The decayed bodies of the undead suddenly got the better of the sofa barricade, bursting through the living room door like a ruptured dam, rapidly filling the room with their hungered determination and foul, rotting flesh stench. With their entry, Carl, still staring at the physical form which played new host to his once loved partner, dropped the lighter. The fire took to the gasoline quickly, parading across the remnants to make a determined flaming stampede in every direction. It filled the room like a quick sunrise moving its way across a field, the light of the hot element filling every crevice and securely attaching itself to every object, surface and zombie in the room. A vast and extensive transition took me from the romance I had witness only seconds before to what I imagined Hell to be; a burning fire consuming everything in its wake, causing the undead to scream as their bodies perished under the intensity of the flames.
“Lance! Quick! GO!”
My screams of desperation bellowed down to Lance who had only made it half way down. Left with little choice, I pulled myself over the window ledge, and without getting a firm grip of my feet on the exterior bricks of the wall I wrapped my hands around the sheet to slide down. Lance adopted the same manoeuvre, yet already establishing a grip permitted him to slide gracefully down to the pavement, whilst I did not entertain the same diplomacy. I tried to inaugurate at least one hand in a secure grip, but with each hand relying on the ability of the other, I soon found I had no grip at all and was making a far quicker descent than intended. The flames erupted out of the window above me, sending shards of glass and bits of whatever else into a Hellish cloud which rained down on the outside high street. My viewpoint saw this ahead of me, yet the image was moving further away as I reversed with some conviction down this vertical brick road. My hands and feet tried to grab anything and everything to stop gravity doing what it does best, yet my attempts came at no avail as I hurtled to my inevitable concrete crash matt below. It took an age to hit the ground, enjoying the fireworks as I fell, but the pain when I eventually found the pavement came intensively quickly. Lance had rolled out of the way at the last second as I managed to catch him up significantly with gravity aiding my descent. I winded myself, which although took a moment to regain my breath wasn’t actually that bad of a ramification. However, it was the pain writhing up from my ankle that drove the nerves all the way up to my brain, releasing the most extensively agonising feeling that I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing.